GoPro wins Science and Technology Emmy award for its contribution to film and TV production

There is little doubt that the GoPro has changed the market in camcorders. Gone are those days when you needed to keep a camera dry and away from shocks. We now live in a world where everyone records everything they do, and some of that stuff is exceptionally gnarly. So it makes sense that the GoPro Hero range would become very popular.

Emmy Awards are usually known for the glitz and glamour of actors winning for performances, but the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences which bestows these awards on individuals and companies sees the whole of motion picture production as an area where amazing innovation happens constantly. So GoPro's award of a Science and Technology Emmy really isn't much of a surprise, given how useful they have become in film and TV production.

The company's CEO Nicholas Woodman collected the award at the ceremony, and told the audience that there was some mystery about why one small store in Hollywood was selling so many GoPros. Once they asked the owner, he revealed that it was because Universal was buying them in huge numbers to use where it wouldn't risk enormous, and high-priced cameras. And thus a whole market for these cameras was born.

And they are marvellous little cameras too. Small, light and waterproof to some impressive depths in the right housing, they record remarkable quality video for such small devices, and have some surprising features - think about 4K and slow-motion support and how much the picture quality has improved since the firm launched its first non-HD camera.

During his speech, Woodman also revealed that we "aint seen nothing yet" suggesting the firm will announce products soon that will advance the camera further. We predict better battery life and an even more impressive resolution, hopefully with 4K at rates that allow slow motion, like 50 or 60p. Time will tell. And he also mentioned during his speech that the Hero is now the best selling camera in the world, so presumably they're not struggling for money.

If you want to watch the acceptance speech, the video is embedded above - all shot on GoPro cameras, of course